[pg_bot]

You need to take the long view. The United States is the only global superpower because of our economic might. If other countries catch up to us, they will start to test the waters on whether going to war is advantageous for them.

The ports play a crucial role in wealth generation for the USA. If other countries are able to ship goods cheaper and faster than us, more industry will be transferred overseas. This creates a vicious cycle where industries that exist due to agglomeration slowly decay. Being able to move a container 1000ft is the limiting reagent for entire economies. Buy the unions off and automate it. Everyone only cares about a relatively small amount of money compared to how much is moving through the system.

[stego-tech]

If we’re going to take the long view, then we’re long past due to create a society where the excess wealth generated by labor is shared among us all such that nobody must work to survive, as opposed to the current model of allowing a handful who already have enough money to never need to work again to hoover up even more wealth for themselves.

If we’re going to take the long view, we’re about fifty years late to the transition away from fossil fuels so we protect and preserve our current climate.

If we’re going to take the long view, then we’re about a hundred years too late in the US to expanding and modernizing our mass transit such that it benefits the whole, rather than the private.

If we want to talk about the long view so damn bad, then we need more housing and less office space; we need more integrated communities and less segregated zoning; we need equitable and affordable access to healthcare and education to ensure a functioning worker base, and less gatekeeping of knowledge or health behind individual wealth.

Don’t trot out the tired trope of automation as a long view goal, and then ignore the entire past century of sacrificing the long view for short teem gains. It reveals your insincerity as well as your ignorance.

[diggan]

> You need to take the long view. The United States is the only global superpower because of our economic might. If other countries catch up to us, they will start to test the waters on whether going to war is advantageous for them.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if there was no "global super powers". And I don't believe there has to always be at least one "super power" country either. This is considering the long view, not just "USA #1" view that seems many in the US seems to hold.

> If other countries are able to ship goods cheaper and faster than us, more industry will be transferred overseas.

Are other countries able to ship goods cheaper and faster than the US currently? This seems uncertain.

> Everyone only cares about a relatively small amount of money compared to how much is moving through the system.

Seems like the executives of the companies refusing to give people a living wage is the ones "cares about a relatively small amount" if what you are writing is true.

[Uehreka]

> Buy the unions off and automate it.

There’s an old marxist saying: “if workers owned the means of production, automation would be a holiday, not a layoff”. If you’re proposing turning over the shipyard profits to the workers, that’s a policy the unions will absolutely get behind. It’s also something the shipyard owners will fight tooth and nail to prevent, they’re the ones you’ll need to buy off, and buying the shipyards will be expensive.

At the end of the day I don’t think enough people share your sentiments to make any policy of this scale (even the 30 years of payments you specify elsewhere) politically viable. And as I said in another thread: if your solutions aren’t viable in the current political environment, they’re just wishful thinking, and the workers on strike want solutions that will work today.

[phil21]

Slight nitpick: I think you mean ports, not shipyards. Shipyards are where ships get constructed and repaired. Ports are where cargo is loaded and offloaded.